


always in the same direction

by mimsical



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Cabins, Depression, Disaster Boys, Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Kink Exploration, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Music, Mutual Pining, Queer Themes, Rope Bondage, Safewords, Subspace, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-06-05 22:44:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsical/pseuds/mimsical
Summary: Something is up with Dirk Strider, but neither friend nor family has been able to pry the truth of just what out of him. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Jake English has been desperate to devise an unsinkable plan of seduction for a long time. Seizing his opportunity by the scruff of the neck, he whisks Dirk off for a summer at a secluded mountainside cabin.Can he find a way to make his plan a reality? Of course he can! What could possibly go wrong?





	1. an age old desire to please

GT: Ahoy there strider!   
GT: I hope youre having a terrifically fantastic morning over there.   
GT: In fact if you arent ill have quite the bone to pick with whatever made it less than ducky!! You my man deserve only the best and the universe should make note of that.   
GT: I will take it upon myself as your best friend to challenge the cruel mistress who would create such unpleasantness in your life! Well go man to man! Mano a mano! Let dirk strider have enjoyable mornings you dastardly fiend!   
TT: Ok, what do you want.   
GT: Uh.   
GT: Whos saying i want anything? Perhaps i just wanted to pay my good friend a compliment you scoffing skeptic.   
GT: Yes thats exactly why im here. A gent such as myself should always be prepared to dole out friendly remarks of flattery to brighten the days of his compatriots as you should well know by now!   
GT: In fact just to spite your oh so typical contrariness i will now dish up another heaping portion of accolades. I think you are a very clever and talented fellow who is decidedly not terrible in the face realm!   
GT: So there!   
TT: Thanks. So, what do you want?   
GT: Erm. Well.   
GT: I did mean to drop by to forewarn you that i will be coming stateside next month in fact before you accused me of ulterior motives. But i hardly think informing you of travel plans qualifies me for having some plan to eek out a favor of somesort from you.   
TT: Oh, cool.   
TT: Any particular destination? Or are you just trying to fly to higher ground before monsoon season hits.   
GT: Well! As a matter of fact i do have a destination!   
GT: Its a favor to my gran really. She has some pal who lives way out in the boonies who shes luring off for a summer of excitement together.   
GT: Or well is it the boonies if he lives off on some mountain away from other people?   
GT: Well nonetheless. I have been bribed into playing house for him while hes away.   
TT: Trading one remote forested paradise for another?   
GT: Thats what im told! Hopefully gran is not talking up this fellows home location in order to better persuade me to go. But ill be there all summer out on my own.   
GT: Supposedly there is some little town nearby though im not so sure about dipping my toes into their little community.   
GT: Arent little american towns supposed to be very suspicious of outsiders intentions??   
TT: Wouldn’t know, dude. Do I look like I venture into small town America very often?   
GT: Fine fine you city mouse. I will just have to tackle this potentially harrowing adventure without any helpful assistance from my grumposaur best buddy.   
GT: :( :( :(  
TT: I’m sure you’ll survive. Just don’t watch too many horror movies before you go into town.   
TT: Wait, does this place have internet? How far out are you going to be?  
GT: I have been assured that there is indeed an internet connection and some basic electricity. And even plumbing!   
GT: Gran sent me a few pictures of the place. Its not half as rough as what youre picturing id wager. Theres even a sizeable shower and i know how you feel about those.   
GT: Hmm theres a sweet fireplace like one of those real brick ones you know? The main bedroom is actually up in this loft above the rest of the cabin which is cool as hell even you have to admit that but theres also a little extra bedroom in the back.   
GT: And theres a lake! Not directly nearby but a quick little jaunt through the forest away. Since its summer itll be nice and warm for swimming and maybe even fishing though id probably need someone to show me the ropes for that.   
TT: This is beginning to maybe sound like an invitation to come visit you while you’re there.   
GT: Oh my! Well thats quite the thought isnt it. Do i even dare to try and peel you away from that smog slick town youre so vehemently attached to?   
TT: I mean, I could visit.   
TT: Or even help you on the drive out there if you want. Back roads can be tough driving, especially if you’re not used to driving much.   
TT: It’s not like I have anything better going on.   
GT: Now this sounds like the start of a plan to me!   
GT: If you come at the start since youll be doing some of the actual work with me id be more than happy to split the stipend ill be getting with you.   
GT: You know the payment for watching this dudes house while hes away plus money for groceries and whatnot.   
TT: That’s not necessary.   
GT: Well i disagree!   
GT: If were splitting the work and watching the house together then it would be mighty unfair if i didnt split the money as well.   
GT: I could never stand for such injustice. It would go against my sense of honor too strongly!   
TT: …   
TT: Alright, fine. You win.   
TT: Do you have the date you’re flying out settled?  
GT: :D8 !!!!  
GT: Not yet! But i will send them along your way the second i do.   
GT: :)8 :)8 :)8   
TT: Yeah, yeah.   
TT: Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard, dude. You might break something.   
GT: Ha!   
GT: You think youre real funny sir dont you.   
GT: Well see whos laughing when i push you into the lake!  
TT: I take it back, I’m staying home where it’s nice and dry and not filled with breeding mosquitoes.   
GT: I do not believe for an instant that there are no mosquitoes in texas.   
TT: Well, you got me there. Guess I have to come after all.   
GT: No take backs!   
TT: What are we, twelve?   
GT: If that is what it takes to get you out to the mountains with me then i fully embrace my youthful nature!   
GT: I will be the tallest most rugged and manliest twelve year old you have ever laid your fine peepers upon.   
TT: Alright, now it’s just weird. 

 

* * *

 

Dirk Strider leaned against the side of his car and contemplated the parking lot around him. Jake had run into the store, professedly to acquire sustenance for the last leg of their journey, though Dirk figured it was equally likely that Jake just needed to piss. They’d topped off the tank of gas already, to be sure they wouldn’t get stuck somewhere between town and the cabin Jake had been hyping up, which was a whole 45 minutes away from any other human beings. How the hell had he let Jake talk him into this, he wasn’t sure.

Well, no, he knew why, but it didn’t bear mentioning.

The town was, as far as towns go, an ordinary tiny mountain town like any other. A smattering of houses, all insulated for a snowy, high altitude winter. Grocery store, a diner, a laundromat, a bar. A hilariously small City Hall. An ubiquitous post office. There was even a library, which Dirk appreciated. He felt rather dubious about Jake’s insistence that they’d have internet up at the cabin.

And, contrary to Jake’s concerns, nobody was giving them more than a curious glance. The gas station dude had been perfectly polite. Amicable, even. Had asked where they were headed, sure, but that was a pretty typical question to ask, considering that the back seat of the car was full of luggage.

The door of the store swung open and Jake emerged. Dirk straightened from his slouch against the car and raised an eyebrow.

“Did you fall in?” he asked.

“Hardy har har,” Jake said, opening the passenger door. “Guess I’ll be keeping the fanta for myself, then.” He dropped the receipt on the floor by his feet as Dirk slid into his own seat.

“Absolutely not,” Dirk said. “Hand over the goods, English, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Jake laughed and dropped the soda in the cup holder, opening a candy bar for himself. “Righto, then, let’s hit the road, Jack!” he said with the same enthusiasm he’d had when uttering that particular phrase three other times already at other stops on their drive.

Dirk just sighed to inform Jake how much bullshit he was putting up with out of the goodness of his heart and turned the ignition on. Jake (annoyingly) kicked off his boots (again) and leaned back in his chair as Dirk pulled out of the parking lot and got back on the road.

“Don’t take a nap,” he said. “I need you to tell me which turns to take.”

Jake yawned widely. “Oh, tosh, it’s not like there’s more than a couple crossroads. You’re more than capable of reading the directions yourself.”

“Right, because your handwriting is so decipherable.”

“Exactly!” Jake shot him a wink. “So you’ll have no trouble at all, then.”

Dirk sighed more pointedly, and Jake’s grin grew. “Alright, alright, I’ll push off my kip a little longer,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure this means you’ll have to make breakfast because I’ll be busy wielding a butterfly net against all my Zs.”

“I always forget how fucking weird you are,” Dirk said. “Text does not do you justice, dude.”

“Flatterer,” Jake said, full on laughing now. “I’m sorry to say that I can only say the same for you, my friend. I’m shocked nobody called the fuzz on us with you loitering around in those fucking ridiculous specs of yours.”

“They’re sunglasses.”

“They’re triangular and the arms are orange. Orange, Dirk. Go left — left!”

“Jesus, dude, I’m going left,” Dirk said, putting on his turn signal dutifully. The leftward road headed upward, deeper into the trees and higher up the slope. Dirk anticipated a lot of switchbacks in their future. “How the hell does your grandma know such a recluse, anyway?”

“Um, I think they went to school together?” Jake screwed up his face in thought. “Or maybe she mentored him while he was a PhD candidate, I don’t remember.”

The paved road abruptly ran out and switched over to gravel. Dirk winced at the thought of the dust that was soon to be caked onto his car. “So you’re not just babysitting the house of a recluse, it’s the house of a geek recluse.”

“Well, what did you expect?” Jake asked reasonably. “Gran does spend half the year on an island with just me and the dogs for company.”

“Fair point.” Dirk wondered if the “45 minutes from civilization” tagline on this house accounted for the slow speeds dirt roads demanded. He sure fucking hoped so. Trying to find this place in the dark did not appeal.

Luckily, Jake kept to his word and stayed awake, playing at navigator between long stretches of chatter. It was always like this when they met up again after a long stretch. Jake would cheerfully talk his ear off for a day or two, then abruptly remember that he was much more used to being alone and spend a few hours hiding. Dirk was used to the pattern by now, and… it was nice, to have Jake always be so clearly delighted to see him again.

They continued to bump along the road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them. The trees to either side of the road were all tall, dark green pines with minimal underbrush. It was a nice change of scenery, Dirk could admit. Nicer to look at than dirty skyscrapers and smog, for sure. Not that he’d admit that where Jake could hear it. He’d never hear the end of it.

Jake directed him up through a couple more branches off the road and they climbed steadily higher and deeper into the wilderness. Dirk snagged a piece of gum from Jake’s stash once he finished his soda and his ears popped as he chewed it. Ugh, cinnamon flavor.

“You’re thinking awful hard there, Mr. Strider,” Jake observed.

“Just ruminating on your awful taste in gum,” Dirk said. It was, in fact, already losing its flavor. “Did you intentionally buy the worst kind or — oh, shit, is that it?”

They had come around a final turn in the road and there, at the end, was a small cabin nestled among the trees. Jake sat up excitedly as Dirk carefully drove them down the remaining stretch.

“Yes, that’s it, that’s it!” He grabbed Dirk’s shoulder in excitement. “We’re here!”

“So we are,” Dirk said, eyeing up the cabin. Not too run down. No moss growing on the roof. The owner must have maintained it well. He pulled up beside it and put the car in park, then put on the parking break for good measure.

Jake was practically bouncing in his seat. “Let’s go in! I want to have a look around first before we have to fuss over the bags, come on, Dirk.”

“Okay, alright, let’s go.” Jake was halfway out the door by the time Dirk finished speaking, and he hurried to catch up.

The steps of the porch creaked as he climbed them. Jake was rooting around under the front mat and then popped back up, triumphant, key in hand. “Ready for the big reveal, Strider?” he asked, grinning widely.

“Sure am,” Dirk said, amused by Jake’s antics. “Hit me with it.”

Jake shot him one last coy look before turning and fitting the key into the lock. The door opened smoothly, without so much as a creak of the hinges. Dirk toed his shoes off before following Jake in and looking around curiously.

The inside of the cabin was… small. Cozy, with wood floors and wood walls but with windows big enough to let in the dappled light. There was, as promised, a decent sized fireplace, and what looked like a comfortable couch and chair in front of it. A desk in the far corner with an older desktop monitor. Stairs that were also made of wood, leading up to the loft bedroom, Dirk assumed.

To the other side of the cabin was the kitchen and a few doors leading off from it, but Dirk’s attention was caught elsewhere. He moved to a cabinet in front of a window and lifted the protective lid. It was a record player, and he would bet a decent sum that the interior of the cabinet contained a record collection. Fuckin’ nice.

Jake was busy throwing open the doors in the kitchen and poking his head into the rooms beyond. “Pantry, bathroom,” he reported, shutting the doors again. “And back here… the spare bedroom, just as advertised! Jeez Louise, it’s a bit small, isn’t it. Well, that’s alright.”

Dirk turned in a slow circle, taking in the room again. “Hey, Jake,” he said. “You sure about this grand summer away plan, now that you’ve seen the place?”

“Um, yes?” Jake re-emerged fully and shot him a puzzled look from the kitchen. “Is this just the classic Strider persnicketiness making an appearance, or are you spotting something that escaped me?”

Dirk cast an amused, semi theatrical glance around the room. It was a decent little cabin, he could admit. Charming. Cute, he might even say, if pressed. But, still — “No TV.”

Jake looked around wildly. “What? No, it must be upstairs.” He clattered past Dirk in a whirlwind of alarmed movie nerd and climbed the stairs three at a time.

A cry of horror came from the loft. Dirk stifled a laugh, shaking his head.

Jake stuck his head out over the railing, eyes piteously wide. “Dirk! How am I supposed to survive out in this barren fucking wilderness! I’ll be all alone for _months_ without even the sweet company of Mr. Hemsworth to pass the time. Surely I’ll perish of a parched, lonesome existence.” He flopped his upper body dramatically over the railing and whined.

“You brought your laptop, didn’t you?”

“It’s not the same,” Jake complained. “How can I fully appreciate the beauty and the hidden detail that you’re always hounding me to give a shitting crap about this way?” He heaved an enormous sigh.

“Guess you’ll just have to suffer.” Dirk meandered over to the couch and flopped down to test if it was as comfortable as it looked. Indeed it was, and he crossed his arms behind his head and let himself briefly grin up at Jake. “Probably for the best, so you remember to message us once in a while between your predictable hours of hiking.”

Jake sighed again, deeply and long-sufferingly. “Well,” he said. “I guess it’s just a bit more of an adventure than I had bargained for.”

“Seems so.”

“And I do love adventure. Every size, shape, and which way it comes in.”

“So you’ve said before.”

Jake let his head flop forward and heaved one final deep, meaningful sigh, full of despair and agonizing, soul-deep suffering. “Well,” he said. “We’d better start unloading the full crapload of shit I dragged out here. Why didn’t I bring my own darn screen, Dirk?”

“Apparently,” Dirk said dryly, sitting up, “you underestimated what it life looks like for people whose definition of living alone in the woods doesn’t include a fuckton of the newest tech on the market.”

“Yes, but is it really such a reach to think a friend of Gran’s might at friggin’ _least_ own a god darn television?” Without waiting for a response, Jake pushed himself up and gloomily clattered back down the stairs. “Let’s grab the things, shall we?”

They did. Jake had more stuff than Dirk simply because of how much shorter of a stay Dirk would be having, but it still didn’t take too long to haul it all indoors. Dirk plopped his bag of instant coffee on the kitchen counter and made to drag his bag into the small bedroom.

“Whoa, whoa, now, hold up,” Jake protested.

Dirk glanced back at him in confusion. “What?”

“Why are you the one who gets automatically exiled off to the bedroom for ants, then?” Jake crossed his arms. “The way I see it, we should be plopping ourselves down and clasping our hands to have a palm-to-palm scrum for the ultimate prize of where to lay our heads at night! Or actually, that would be a real doozy of an unfair contest, what am I saying. Do you have a coin on hand that we can toss?”

Dirk took a second to parse that. “Okay,” he said. “But, like. If I win the loft room, you’ll just have to drag all your shit up there next week. Seems like a hell of a waste of time to me, dude.”

Jake pulled a face that Dirk wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. “So you squash yourself into the little room for a week and then rattle on back to that dingy little square of floorspace you call an apartment? I don’t think so, bucko! Hand over a damn quarter and let’s have it out like men.”

There really wasn’t a good way to defend his apartment, honestly. It, uh. Dingy was a good word for it, despite his best efforts. Still, Dirk bit down a sigh as he fished around in his pockets and came up with a nickel.

“Tails,” he said before Jake could claim it. He flipped it up in the air and then smacked it down on the counter where they could both see it.

Heads.

“Guess I get the little room after all, huh?” Dirk hoisted his bag up again and raised an eyebrow.

“Fine, fine,” Jake grumbled, slumping in defeat. “You win, go sequester yourself off.”

Dirk just shook his head in bemused amusement. “It’s really fine,” he said, mostly to get the last word, and then went and dumped his bag on the bed. The room wasn’t actually that bad, now that he was seeing it for himself. Narrow bed, a big chest at the foot that turned out to be full of heavy wool blankets when he curiously lifted the lid. Antlers decorated the wall that didn’t have a window. It was cozy, just like the rest of the house.

He could hear Jake’s footsteps on the floor of the loft over his head, tromping around. It was muffled, though, so he wouldn’t have to worry about being woken in the night if Jake got up. Better than that hotel room they’d shared a few years back when visiting Roxy, frankly.

Leaving the room be, he went to poke around and figure out where things were. The bathroom was the first door after the bedroom, and he found it to be plainly but efficiently outfitted. Fresh towels and linens in the cabinet, storage under the sink, a well-draining shower. Looked good to him.

Next was the pantry, most accessible from the kitchen. He figured it might take a little longer to get familiar with where things were stored, but hey, he wasn’t the one who would have to deal with that, was he? He looked through the kitchen, too, so he would at least know where the plates and utensils were. Jake came back down as he examined the selection of mugs in the cabinet nearest the window, and Dirk spared him a brief glance in greeting.

Jake flopped himself down at the table and mournfully watched Dirk go through the cupboards. “Have I gotten myself in over my head, Strider?” he asked, unusually plain-out.

“Nah,” Dirk said. “I know you, dude. You can adjust to anything. And this place is pretty sweet, you’ll just have to get used to it, first.”

“I don’t know,” Jake murmured. “It seems awful lonesome, out here on my own.”

“Maybe you’ll make a friend in town,” Dirk suggested.

Jake pulled a face that suggested he found this idea unlikely, which, well, that was fair. Dirk didn’t think he’d be too great at slumming it with the locals, either.

“Well,” he said instead, shutting the final cabinet and leaning against the counter to stare Jake down. “You have the internet still, yeah? You can talk to me and Jane and Rox. I’m sure we’d come visit you, but we’ve all got lives, you know?” He winced internally after he spoke, hoping Jake didn’t interpret that as an insinuation that he thought didn’t have a life.

But Jake just said, “Hmm,” in a tone that implied he wasn’t entirely sure he agreed. Fine. Didn’t change shit, did it? Jane sure was busy with her training to take over Crocker Corp, and Roxy was off getting her Master’s, and Dirk… Whatever. Jake could think what he liked.

They dropped the subject, though, and moved on to a much more important topic: dinner. Neither of them had wanted to stop for groceries after their long drive, so they were stuck with the contents of the pantry and the refrigerator, which was mostly devoid of perishables but did have a good array of condiments.

“We could have...beans?” Dirk eyed the shelves dubiously. “Or, oh, there’s some canned chili. Otherwise I think we might be stuck with cheeseless pasta.”  
  
Jake crowded in farther behind his shoulder to peer at the cans. “Sounds terrific,” he chirped in his ear.  
  
Dirk elbowed him and he stumbled back, laughing. “I’ll get out a pot for it,” he volunteered, followed by the sound of him opening a cabinet and then swearing as he tried to extract the right one without toppling the rest. Dirk took a nice deep breath before grabbing the cans and ditching the pantry as well.  
  
The can opener was a trial to find, but soon enough the chili was heating up on the stove while Jake leaned on his elbows and grinned at Dirk over his hands. “So, Strider,” he said. “Anything in particular you’ve got a hankering to get after this week while we’re out here on our own?”  
  
It took Dirk longer than it should to parse that. “Yeah, I have a real ‘hankering’ to make sure I don’t get anywhere near that lake you keep bringing up,” he said. “That shit’s nasty, all the algae and lost fishing hooks and kelp. No fucking thanks.”  
  
Jake rolled his eyes. “Still such a fussbudget, I see,” he said. “We’ll see about that! I bet I could lure you in to those watery depths.”  
  
“Okay, Nessie. Are you going to let our food burn or are you going to stop threatening me with death by disgusting muck.”

Jake whipped around immediately to check on the chili, which was, in fact, still mostly cold. Dirk snickered softly at the irritated look Jake shot him.

“Gonna check out the music,” he said. “Try not to crash and burn without me.”

Jake muttered something that was no doubt a brilliant, scathing retort, meant to curl Dirk’s hair and make his skin peel, though it somehow suspiciously sounded like, “Yeah, well, well screw you.” Dirk left him to it and went to open the record cabinet.

He’d been right, earlier. Behind the little doors was a shelf stuffed full of records. He tugged out a handful of sleeves carefully and flipped through them. Oldies, mostly. Allman Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and someone called Petula Clark. “Any preference on genre?” he called to Jake.

There was a clatter of what sounded like bowls, and then Jake responded. “Oh, you know me, I’ll be happy with whatever you choose,” Jake said. “Pick something you like!”

Well, that didn’t narrow it down, but it did make things fun. Dirk idly wished he could be here longer and try to make his way through everything in the cabinet, but, well, alas. But it was Jake’s first night here — both of their first nights here. He wanted to pick something to set the mood. Or, uh, make for a nice atmosphere, he meant.

He settled on _Bella Donna_ after a little more debate, spurred on by the sound of Jake getting spoons out of a drawer. It would make good dinner music, and he thought Jake might enjoy it. Dirk put the rest of the sleeves back in the cabinet and swiftly puzzled out the details of how this model of record player worked. Jake called over just as he was carefully lowering the needle down onto the disc.

“Food’s prepared and piping!”

“Yeah, be right there.” He paused just long enough for the first notes to sound from the speaker to make sure the volume wasn’t set to a weird decibel before spinning around and heading back toward the kitchen.

Jake greeted him with an expectant smile. “This is a nice tune you picked out!” he said, beaming at him.

Dirk dropped his eyes to the bowls. “Oh, you dished it up already,” he said. “I mean, uh. Thanks? Yeah. Thank you.” He coughed. “Smells good.”

“Doesn’t it just.” Jake slid the bowls across the counter and Dirk picked them up. Where should he put them down? Next to each other? Across a corner from each other? That seemed better for eye contact and conversation, but chancing a glance at Jake revealed him to still be wearing a stun grenade of a smile. He dropped them down side by side as Jake came over with spoons and actual cloth napkins. Dirk never saw those unless he was at a fancy restaurant, which was almost never.

The next song started up, and Jake quirked an eyebrow at him, which managed to unfreeze him enough to yank out his chair and sit. He took the proffered spoon and stuck it in his chili. It did smell good, actually. Lunch had been a very long time ago.

Jake seemed not to be picking up on the painful aura of awkwardness Dirk was exuding, to his relief. “Gosh, I’m starved,” he said, and wasted not another breath before shoving a large spoonful in his mouth. “Are you going to eat, or are you waiting for dinner and a show?” he asked around his mouthful.

Fuck. Dirk felt his ears go red. “You eat like a starving wolf, dude, it’s hard not to stare,” he deflected, and fixed his gaze on his food. He took a bite to keep himself from speaking again. That would lead nowhere good.

“And you eat like a bird! I’ve half a mind to start force feeding you in the little time I’ve got to fatten you up.” Jake reached over with his usual handsiness to pinch Dirk’s arm. Not lightly, either. “Just wait until you finally meet Gran,” he threatened with a grin Dirk caught sidelong. “You have to watch out for those grandmas, bro, I’m telling you. They’re going to start stopping you in the street to offload the contents of their freezers on you before you can so much as blink or offer a polite declination.”

“I’ll start keeping an eye out for conniving grandparents,” Dirk said with an eyeroll.

“You’d better!” Jake threateningly pointed his spoon at him. “Because if you don’t, some enterprising individual of an elderly persuasion is going to try to swoop in and carry you off, and then I’ll be down a friend and that just won’t do, Dirk. I won’t fucking stand for that, do you hear me?”

Dirk knocked the energetically waving spoon away from his face. “Dude, what. This metaphor has seriously gone off the rails.”

“Shush up and eat your chili.” Jake crammed his spoon back in his mouth and eyed Dirk sidelong pointedly.

“Keep your shirt on, I’m eating, you’re the one making conversation when I’m trying to chow down.” He did eat his bowl, though, because it was good and he’d had a long day with too much junk food. And also because Jake subsided from his weird tangent if he did.

Jake hummed along with some of the songs in a tuneless sort of way, where clearly he didn’t know the words but was enjoying himself anyway. He even drummed his fingers on the table as if playing an invisible piano, which Dirk found more adorable than he was willing to admit even in the safety of his own mind. Clearing his throat, he nodded to Jake’s empty bowl instead. “Done? I’ll clean up.”

“It’s the only life I’ve ever known!” Jake sang, offkey. Dirk took this as a yes and absconded with the dishes.

He rinsed everything out in the sink and then added soap to get down to scrubbing as the song ended and silence fell. “Do you know how to flip a record?” he asked Jake over the sound of running water.

“I’ve seen such a move executed before,” Jake said in a worldly tone, which probably meant he’d seen it in a movie. “Give me just a jiffy and the tunes will start rolling out again.”

Dirk imagined the stress of dealing with a scratched or broken record and trying to replace it before he left, because fuck knew that if he didn’t do it then Jake would conveniently forget that he had ever damaged the owner’s property, but his hands were covered in soap, so he couldn’t do shit about it. He scrubbed the pot clean and stuck it on the stove to dry, craning his neck around to see how it was going.

Jake was holding the record aloft and peering at it curiously on the far side of the room. He was cradling it by the edges, though, so Dirk made himself go back to finish the bowls and ignore the crawling need to intervene before something bad happened. But then moments later the next music started up again and he let out a breath, leaning against the sink for a moment. Jesus. Not a big deal, chill out, he told himself.

He was rinsing off the spoons for a final time when a hand tapped him on the shoulder. Dirk jumped and dropped them back into the sink. “Really?” he said, turning the water off and turning around.

Jake grabbed Dirk’s still-wet hand and tugged him away from the sink, grinning and not saying a word.  

“What are you doing,” he said, but Jake just dragged him over to the living room and bent over to turn up the music. He winced as it suddenly blared more loudly. “Jake.”

Jake spun back around. “Let’s take a blade to this rug and slice it up!”

“Let’s what?”

“Let’s trip the light fantastic! You know, groove!” Jake illustratively stuck his hands up in the air and wiggled his hips.

Dirk took two hasty steps back. “Hell no. No way, I’m not dancing.”

Jake pointed a finger at him and sang, “Ooh, baby, ooh,” surprisingly in time with the lyrics. He shimmied and took an alarming step towards Dirk.

He stood his ground and crossed his arms. “This is dumb,” he told Jake.

“Take that stick out of your ass and put it to use,” Jake said, and spun in a circle, complete with jazz hands. “Flip it around and now you’ve got a snazzy walking stick for a tap dance!”

“What?” Dirk said, who couldn’t actually hear everything Jake was saying over the music. But Jake used his moment of confusion against him to spin around and grab Dirk’s elbow to tug him forward.

“Come onnnn,” Jake entreated, attempting to sway and pull Dirk’s arm with him into a dancing-like motion. “It’s fun, Dirk!”

God, this was fucking embarrassing, but Jake was looking at him with such hopeful pleading. He swayed awkwardly with Jake’s movements, keeping his feet still but letting Jake lead him into something that might resemble dancing.

Pretty sure he looked like a twelve year old idiot who thought he was too cool to dance, Dirk tried to relax enough to follow Jake’s spirited twisting and hopping. Only without the hopping.

Jake beamed wider. “Yes, you’re doing it!” he crowed. He grabbed Dirk’s hand to tug him closer and then ducked under their joined hands to spin around. “Now you!”

He held their arms up in the air and flapped a hand at him until Dirk awkwardly spun under them and around. “I don’t know about this,” he said, trying to be loud enough for Jake to hear him.

“Oh hush, you’re doing great.” Jake twirled the wrong way this time, wrapping himself up in their arms until he could’ve leaned back against Dirk’s chest if he wanted.

Which he didn’t do, because that wasn’t what was going on here. No, Jake was just using the leverage to make Dirk sway with him while he sang along with more of the chorus.

“Just like the white winged dove sings a song, sounds like she’s singing,” Jake sang loudly. Still not entirely on key, but he was getting closer, actually. Dirk just tried not to touch Jake any more than he had to, even when Jake’s hair grazed the side of his face and he could have easily leaned in a little closer.

The song reached its end and faded out slowly. Jake made all of Dirk’s nervous care moot by slumping back against his body.

“Whew!” he said. “Isn’t this fun?”

“Sure,” Dirk said. The next song started much slower, and Jake accordingly rocked them from foot to foot much more slowly.

Jake made a reproving noise. “Don’t you just deflect and concur the question away. Do you like this or not?”

Dirk gave into temptation a little and let himself move his head enough to feel Jake’s hair drag against his cheek. “It’s not terrible,” he allowed.

“I knew it.” Jake laughed quietly and Dirk abruptly went from aware of how close they were to much, much too aware. He pulled back and tried to make it seem like more dancing, spinning Jake back out along the length of their arms.

Jake willingly twirled back out and, surprisingly, released Dirk to dance on his own. He put his arms up in the air and swayed, rolling his hips and shoulders from side to side, eyes falling shut. He looked completely at ease, practically serene. Dirk felt like a voyeur from even a brief glance, seeing him to relaxed, head lolling back as he moved. He dropped his gaze to the floor and tried to keep moving his weight between his feet enough to pass inspection if Jake opened his eyes.

 _“They say you're not the man for me,”_ Stevie Nicks crooned. Not helpful at all.

“Hey, whoopsadoodle, you’ve wandered off in your head again, haven’t you?”

Dirk looked back up without thinking and felt almost burned by the concern in Jake’s expression. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m, uh. Not a great dancer.”

“You were doing alright,” Jake disagreed. “Just need to grease those gears is all. We can practice again tomorrow, how’s that? I think that’s a brilliant idea, come to think of it. By the time you escape my clutches you’ll be a bona fide downright hoofer!”

“What the fuck is a hoofer,” Dirk said, not expecting an answer. True to form, Jake just grinned and wiggled his fingers at Dirk until he gave in and let himself be pulled back into orbit.

And it was okay. Like he’d said, not terrible, so long as he didn’t look at Jake too long or think about whether he could get away with putting a hand on his hip. The way Jake smiled when Dirk twirled him again more than made up for any discomfort, and Dirk finally let out a breath and gave himself permission to quietly be glad that Jake had wanted him along for the trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> music referenced in this chapter: the album _bella donna_ by stevie nicks, with the song they dance to specifically being _edge of seventeen,_ which i am told is a very dirk song. 
> 
> also hi everyone, i am back with another au. i have been writing in bits and pieces while shit transpired in my life, but hopefully things will be a bit more settled this month. i have a lot of feels about these cabin boys and hope you will all enjoy them as much as i do!


	2. same old story

Dirk woke at a decent hour the next morning. He'd slept better than he'd expected to, in a new environment and in a strange bed, and was grateful for that as he stretched the sleep-tension out of his body. When he tugged on a hoodie and stuck his head out into the main room, it was empty. Made sense. Jake was probably still asleep.

Fine by him. That meant he had every excuse to hog the shower for as long as he wanted.

He grabbed a fresh set of clothes and his shower gear before heading in to learn to use a new setup. There was a little window near the ceiling in the shower, which he opened after failing to find a different way to keep the steam from growing mildew.

Not that this was such a concern, up in the dust-dry mountains, but still. It was only polite.

He turned the water on to let it heat up and stripped down, folding his pajama shirt and leaving his hoodie with his new clothes. When he stepped under the spray, it struck him firmly, but not so strongly that it stung. A near-perfect water pressure. Still a little cold, so he turned the handle a little farther to the left and then a little farther still, until it was just the right degree of barely under scalding. He sighed and turned his face up into the water, drenching his hair thoroughly, breathing in the steam and letting the steady pound of the spray steal the tension from his muscles.

Nothing, as far as he was concerned, could beat a really good shower when it came to ways to start the morning.

By the time he got around to washing his hair, his body was as loose and languid as it ever got. It felt good to soap up and wash away yesterday's grime, too, like scraping off an itchy layer of gunk and discomfort. Like starting fresh with a new day, if he were inclined to be poetic.

Eventually the water began to run cold though, and Dirk reluctantly got out before it became intolerable. He scrubbed most of the water off of himself and got dressed, wrapped the towel around his head to keep his hair from going wild before he could style it. The rest of his ablutions went by in the haze of habitual motion, and when his hair was dry enough he used light product to put it in his usual style. Didn't need much to manage it, not in this weather.

When he was done, he ventured back out into the rest of the cabin. Still no sign of Jake, but Dirk was hungry, so he opened the pantry to scrounge for breakfast.

There wasn't much in the way of typical breakfast food, he quickly discovered. No cereal, though there wasn't milk in the first place either. No eggs in the fridge, no bread. He finally discovered a mostly-empty container of oatmeal in the back corner of the pantry, but the expiration date was too faded for him to be able to read clearly.

This was not particularly encouraging.

He left the oats out on the counter nonetheless and instead went to the living room to see if he could peer up into the loft. The cabin was silent except for his footsteps, not even a rustle coming from upstairs. He stood on the couch and went up on tiptoe, trying to see if Jake really was still passed out, but wasn't able to catch more than a glimpse of the bed.

Well, hell. It was well past nine in the morning by then. He wondered how annoyed Jake would be if he woke him up. "Jake?" he tried calling, hoping to maybe rouse Jake from sleep without actually having to go up there.

No response. Not even a snore. Dirk brushed off the sudden worry that Jake might have somehow suffocated in his blankets during the night.

There was nothing else to it. He was going to have to go up there.

Or, well, he could go to the grocery store on his own, but that sounded lame as hell. Besides, he wasn't Jake's personal grocery shopper. Dirk formed a plan in his mind. He would go up the stairs, not quietly, and then loudly say something along the lines of, "Hey lazybones, get the fuck up already." Or maybe, "Dude, are you going to sleep all morning?"

Something like that would be good. Casual, but right to the point. Yeah.

He climbed down off the couch with an awkwardly loud thump and then froze, listening for signs of life. Still more silence. Okay. He could proceed as planned, then.

The stairs creaked under his feet as he climbed them, making him wince. Right, he was supposed to make noise and just charge up the steps, but he kept pausing to listen before hurriedly making himself climb again at the thought of Jake waking up and seeing him coming up the stairs like an anxious cat.

At the top he paused, confronted by a lumpy mound of tangled blankets and dark hair. One of Jake's feet stuck out of the pile of bedding at a mysterious angle.

Dirk cleared his throat pointedly. He could hear a brief change in Jake's breathing before it settled back into steadiness.

"Jake," he said. The blankets twitched and the foot retreated back under the safety of the covers.

What had he been planning to say to wake him? Dirk couldn't remember. He approached the bed cautiously. A little strip of dark skin at the back of Jake's neck was exposed, just below his hairline. It was, to Dirk's great misfortune, deeply appealing.

"Hey," he said. His voice came out much softer than he'd meant it to, and he paused for a moment to get himself back under control. "Jake, come on. Up and at 'em."

Jake shifted under the blankets again and turned his head towards Dirk's voice, cracking open an eyelid to squint blearily upwards. He blinked a few times under a halo of tangled curls. "H'lo," Jake mumbled, shutting his eyes again and yawning widely. A hand extracted itself from the blankets, and Jake patted the bed as if for Dirk to lie down next to him.

Dirk considered this, and then sat, perching on the edge of the bed. "You planning on staying here all day, Sleeping Beauty?" he asked.

"Mmmrgh," Jake complained. "Told you, didn't I? No nap. Need sleep."

Dirk shook his head, amused. "You'd sleep the day away if I let you, wouldn't you."

"Jetlag," Jake mumbled. “‘s a real doozy of a motherfucker, Dirk.” His hand somehow flailed out and affixed itself around Dirk’s wrist and tugged.

Dirk resisted. “There’s nothing for breakfast,” he told Jake, which was really only an exaggeration if looked at from the wrong angle. “We have to go to the store.”

“Nnnnn.”

“Jake.”

Jake heaved a sigh so deep that it seemed to have begun in the fathomless reaches of his soul. He wriggled around and extracted some of himself from the blankets, releasing Dirk’s wrist so he could stretch. The blankets fell away, revealing Jake’s bare shoulders and chest and the dusky pink shape of a nipple. Dirk hastily turned to admire the view out of the loft to the rest of the cabin. He actually couldn’t see much of it while sitting down. Oh well.

“So what’s this about a breakfast kerfuffle?” Jake asked finally, wriggling around and kicking the blankets out flatter from the tangled mess he’d made of them.

Dirk risked a glance back and found he could look Jake in the face without his eyes wandering. “Well, more of a lack of one,” he said. “There’s some real ancient-looking oatmeal that I dug out of the very back of a cabinet, but I don’t know, man. Doesn’t that shit get bugs living in it eventually?”

Jake wrinkled his nose in thought. “Don’t know about that,” he admitted. “I’ve never been much of one to munch down on any crunchable oats.”

“I don’t think they’re meant to be crunchy, but sure.” Dirk caught himself eyeing an errant, escaping curl draped across Jake’s forehead and forced his gaze back to meet Jake’s.

Luckily for him, Jake was blind as a bat without his glasses on, and Dirk was sitting between him and the bedside table.

He cleared his throat. “But, uh, other than that, we’re SOL. Need to make a grocery run.”

Jake groaned and sat up more fully to stretch his arms. The blankets fell to his waist, exposing the delicate bare skin of his hip. Oh, god, he wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, was he. “The grocery store is so far,” Jake whined. “Why didn’t we do this yesterday?”

“Because the car was full of your shit and we were both tired as hell?” Dirk offered, doing his best to keep his eyes from glueing to the hint of thigh he could see. Jesus, cut it out, he thought to himself. Jake was his friend; Jake trusted him. He couldn’t use that to run himself a fucking peep show.

“Ugh, don’t be so reasonable.” Jake, apparently finished stretching, shoved the blankets back and rolled out of bed. Dirk caught half a glance of the soft shape of Jake’s dick and the curve of his ass before he yanked himself away to stare at the wall.

“How much time do you need?” he asked over the sound of Jake opening his suitcase. “I could go get my shoes and start the car.” He could hear the quiet rustle of fabric and tried very hard not to think about Jake’s legs.

“Yes, I’ll be ready in 5,” Jake said, muffled by what must have been a shirt.

“Cool.” Dirk got up and, carefully keeping his eyes to the stairs and stairs alone, headed back down.

He grabbed his shoes from the front door and went out to sit on the porch as he put them on. The air was warming with the sun, the crispness of night rapidly burning off. He took a deep breath.

Jake’s boundaries were weird sometimes. He knew this. Their friends knew this. It was just one of those quirks about Jake that they’d learned to navigate over the years, some basic differences about him that came from his life and childhood being very different from what Dirk was used to. Jake had mentioned before that he liked to skinny dip in the ocean. This was an easy and clear extrapolation of that, casual comfort with nudity.

Dirk could talk to him about it, maybe. Tell Jake that he was a little less chill with going full frontal. _Hey, Jake, please don’t show me your dick._ But inevitably Dirk wouldn’t be able to play it straight (ha), would have to make a joke of it, and then Jake would tease him about being shy, and he would get flustered enough for Jake to tell.

And it wasn’t a long leap from that to Jake realizing that Dirk had been checking him out, and there was no ending to that where Jake cheerfully exclaimed, “Well boy howdy, why didn’t you just say so,” while unzipping his pants and pushing Dirk down to his knees.

Dirk finished lacing his shoes and braced himself there for a moment. He took a deep breath, blew it out, and locked all that shit back down to where it lived in the back of his brain. Then he stood up and unlocked the car with absolutely not a single more thought dedicated to how nice Jake’s cock looked.

 

* * *

 

At the grocery store, after the long drive in, Dirk confiscated the cart when Jake tried to use it to surf down the aisles. He figured at least one of them should try to be responsible. He relegated Jake to the role of “grabber of things” rather than “pusher of carts,” claiming the latter role for himself.

Jake, of course, sulked. “One of these days,” he announced, “I will unearth a way to make you reconnect with the childlike joy that lives in all our hearts.”

“Okay, Hallmark,” Dirk said. “Get that big thing of milk.”

Jake dutifully obliged and put it in the cart next to the carrots.

“Okay,” he said. “Then next… how many eggs should we get.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not have to flip around and come back here so speedy-quick.” Jake shrugged and bent to examine the eggs.

“Get a big one, then,” Dirk said, consulting his shopping list.

Jake did as commanded. “I was thinking about what we could do this afternoon,” he began. Dirk braced himself for whatever idea Jake had cooked up. “I know you’ve raised plentiful objections to going for a dip, but I’d like to at least hike out to the lake? We could bring some of this food we’re picking out and have ourselves a picnic!”

Dirk shrugged. “Sure. Sounds fine to me. Better hope the mosquitoes haven’t hatched yet, though.”

“Oh, they never bite me.” Jake sounded irritatingly blasé about this. “I guess they don’t like how I taste, haha.”

Dirk seriously considered the pros and cons of telling Jake to go fuck himself. There was a person at the other end of the aisle who had a kid sitting in their cart, so he kept it under wraps. “Well, aren’t you lucky,” he settled for saying instead. Good thing he’d packed bug spray. “Should we grab some lunch meat or something, then? For the picnic.”

Jake clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad we have this understanding of each other,” he said.

It was a challenge not to lean into Jake’s grip. “Okay,” he said, nonsensically. “Let’s, uh, finish this section, and then I think they have prepackaged meats in the next aisle? Probably, anyway.”

“Do we need cheese?” Jake asked hopefully. “I hardly ever get any, you know, it’s such a treat. And they have so many kinds!”

“I mean, sure. What do you want to eat it on?”

Jake scrunched up his nose in thought, peering at the shelf. “I dunno exactly,” he said. “What do you usually eat it with?”

“Uh.” Dirk, who ate a lot of takeout, wracked his brains for a good answer. “...Omelettes? Pasta. Some kinds of soup. It depends.”

“Well, those all sound like a treat to me!” Jake sounded unfortunately cheerful about this. “Do you do much of your own cooking, Dirk? I’ve always had to, you know that, but I don’t think we’ve had much chattering about the reverse, come to think of it.”

Dirk tried to reach for an answer that wouldn’t be completely embarrassing. “When I want to, sure,” he said. Nailed it. “You want me to make something for you?”

Jake flat-out beamed at him, a dazzlingly bright smile. Dirk directed his attention toward the cartons of juices on the shelves. He reached past Jake to snag an OJ. "That sounds like the most flipping delightful thing you've ever suggested to me!" Jake exclaimed, a little too loudly. Dirk tried to furtively look around to make sure nobody had turned to look at them. Seemed like they were in the clear. "You really know how to make a pal feel special, you know that, Strider?" Jake was still grinning widely.

Knowing he was doomed to failure, Dirk tried to avoid thinking about how cute he thought Jake's gapped front teeth were, and how much he liked it when Jake looked at him like he was the best thing he'd ever seen.

"Anything specific you've got a hankering for?" he asked instead. "Or should I surprise you with a Strider Special." Fuck, why did he say that. There was no Strider Special, unless he counted Dave's wonky staircase-shaped bacon pancakes, which Dirk would not be emulating any time soon.

Jake could have practically illuminated the room, he was grinning so hard. "A Strider Special, eh?" he asked. God, of course he went for that. "Now _that_ sounds like the kind of adventure that a fellow such as myself would find maximally appetizing. In fact, I do believe you've got my tummy rumbling in expectation already!"

"No, that's just because we skipped breakfast," Dirk said. "Go pick out some cheese, dude. I have to think up my list of secret ingredients."

Jake waggled his eyebrows ridiculously, but obligingly went to examine the cheese selection. Dirk sagged against the cart. Shit. Jesus fucking shit, why didn't he _ever_ think before opening his damn mouth. Okay, fuck, what was he half decent at making? Or, hell, what did he think he could swing if he got a chance to download a recipe from somewhere.

Pasta, sure, he was decent at that, and given a little time he was sure he could think up an adequately interesting sauce for it. But that was hardly likely to blow Jake away with his prowess at cooking, and seemed kind of dumb to claim as a secret specialty. Anyone could sauté some onions and throw some basil in a pot. So something else, then. He had made pizzas from scratch once, with Jane, but no, fuck, Jake had been there for that. It had been during a visit up to the PNW he'd done back when he was still in school.

He glanced up and found Jake still deeply absorbed by the array of cheeses available to him. Dirk reached into his pocket, snagged his phone, and attempted to google "recipes to impress your friends with." Down in town he at least had a few tentative bars of internet connection. He stared intently down at his phone from behind his shades, willing the webpage to load faster.

The search results loaded in. _15 recipes sure to impress your boyfriend!_ the internet suggested cheerfully. Dirk scrolled past that one to the next suggestion. God, most of these recipes were weird paleo bowls and fancy kale shit. Dirk hadn't the slightest idea what to do with kale, and for that matter he felt pretty dubious about the chances of this grocery store having it in the first place.

Maybe something with fish? But they were really far inland. Harder to be impressive with a meal that came with a side of freezer burn. Steaks? Dirk felt pretty sure he could make steaks. There might even be a grill at the cabin. He scanned the beginning of a recipe from a page entitled _Meals to Wow Your Man!_ The first three paragraphs were all details of the writer's microgreens garden.

"Thinking awfully hard there, Dirk?" Jake asked. Dirk -- did not _jump_ , but he might have startled visibly.

He stashed his phone in his pocket rapidly. "Just double checking an ingredient," he lied. "What'd you get?"

Jake, clearly pleased with himself, held up two packages of pepper jack. "I found these piquant fellows hiding among the rabble! Don't they look delicious?"

Dirk withheld a groan. "Sure, if spice is your thing." It was not Dirk's, unlike certain jungle-dwelling individuals who he would let go unnamed.

"Can you use it in your oh so secret meal?" Jake asked. Dirk frowned at him suspiciously, but found nothing that would hint to him being made fun of.

"Maybe," Dirk said, opting to employ an air of mystery in self defense. "Come on, let's stop dicking around and finish shopping, I'm starving."

Jake amenably put the cheese in the cart and fell into step with Dirk. "Where to next, then?"

"We'll need some stuff from dry goods..." Dirk frowned up at the little signs describing each aisle, and then picked one at random, trying to look decisive and informed as he pushed to cart towards it.

Turned out to be the cereal aisle. That was fine. They bickered briefly over which type of cereal was clearly superior before compromising with honey nut "loop-ios," which came in the largest box anyway. At the other end of the row were boxed cookies and chips.

Jake beelined for the cookies with a gasp. "Dirk, there's a veritable army of choices! Gadzooks, how could a gent ever choose between these delights?"

"Flip a coin?" Dirk snagged some chips and stashed them in the cart while Jake leaned down to examine the bottom row of choices.

"I'd need a twenty-sided coin for this!" Jake flapped a hand at the choices.

"Just get oreos or something."

"Or _something_ , Dirk, how can I ever know which is best?"

Dirk leaned against the cart, amused by Jake's theatrics. Overhead, the speakers began playing something that Dirk identified after a moment as an old Lady Gaga song. He winced and tried to focus on Jake to block it out. "You've got all summer to try every kind," he pointed out.

"All summer, surely, but which is the best for sharing with my good buddy and his exacting tastes?" Jake looked up at Dirk piteously. "It would be such a shame to choose one that you didn't enjoy and then never have a chance to rectify such a terrible ill as that."

"I think you're exaggerating the degree of disaster that that would be." Dirk pointed to a box at random. "Get those, they're good."

Jake picked up the -- well, apparently the box of knock-off oreos. "I trust your judgement," he said with a firm nod. Dirk tried not to feel like a horrible liar.

They moved on to the next aisle and this time located the pre-packaged foods. "Oh, goodness gosh!" Jake said, swerving straight towards the ramen. "Dirk, it's just like what college kids eat in the movies! Did you eat this in college?"

"Yes," Dirk said, electing not to mention that he had eaten ramen for lunch right before he had gone to pick Jake up from the airport. "It's better if you put an egg in it."

Jake seemed delighted by this information. "We should get some!" he said. "Shit, that would be darb as hell. We could play it up as if we were a pair of smooth gents at the local university, and -- oh, it'll be just like in 22 Jump Street!"

"Aren't the main characters a pair of cops?"

"Yeeeees?"

"Dude, fuck cops."

"It's just a _movie_ , Dirk." Jake looked to be on the verge of a full on pout.

"Okay, sure, but we're not getting ramen." Dirk attempted to gently usher Jake away from the shelf. "We can make actual meals, dude."

Jake twisted around to keep examining the shelves. "Can you really make food in only 90 flipping seconds? Christ on a top hat! Even at my best it takes at least ten minutes to make something edible from dry foods. Look, Dirk! That macaroni says it's ready in 3 minutes."

"There's no microwave at the cabin," Dirk said. "And hell, dude, if you want instant pasta so bad, I'll make you some better shit, okay?"

That, finally, got Jake's attention back. "Oh? Is this a hint as to what the mysterious Strider Special is assembled from?"

Wait, holy shit. There it was. A light in the dark. "Nah, I'll save that for another time," he said casually. "Whip it out to wow you when you least expect it. Come on, stop fondling the easymac. We have to visit the cheese section again, get a better selection for this shit."

Jake delightedly fell in step with Dirk again. "Jeepers, this is exciting!" he said. "I bet you're a real good chef. A downright five star culinarian. How much time do you need to prepare? Should we put off the lake until tomorrow so you can take full grasp of the reins of the kitchen?"

The other end of the aisle had pastas, so Dirk stopped there to grab some before heading back to the cheese. "I wouldn't want to make you miss out on your hike," he said, inspecting the fusilli.

Jake waved a hand. "Tosh, it can wait a mere 24, don't you think? What's a lake compared to the delightful scene of my best bro in action, making the pots and pans dance to his every whim?"

"Do you think I'm a fucking magician or some shit?" A lady was pushing her cart past the end of the aisle, and she gave him a shocked look that Dirk attributed to his cussing with a wince. Oops. Might want to keep his voice lower when letting his mouth flap uncensored.

"I think magic happens when you put your mind to something," Jake said serenely.

"Um." Dirk tried keep himself from flushing or, worse, telling Jake exactly how demonstrably wrong he was. "Thank you." He should make two kinds of pasta and mix them together at the end, he decided. Maybe that would make the dish seem extra cool.

Jake leaned against the side of the cart and watched Dirk with a distinctly flustering intensity. "Found a good pick yet?"

Dirk selected a bag of little shell-shaped pastas and another of elbow-shaped ones. Two decent shapes for macaroni, he thought. "You bet, bro," he said. "Come on, I need some heavy cream."

"I can help you with that!" Jake said. And winked.

Dirk’s brain briefly stalled with a screeching noise.

"You need other ingredients, right?" he continued. "You go get those, and I'll pick up the dairy products you need."

"Oh," Dirk said. "Right, yeah. Get me some sharp cheddar and parmesan, too, okay?"

"You got it, chum!" Jake shot him a single fingergun as he sauntered off towards the dairy section once again.

Dirk rubbed his forehead and dumped the pastas in the cart. He didn’t think that had been innuendo? It didn’t make sense for it to be innuendo, at least. It was probably just his brain going into overdrive from that initial shock of being with Jake again after a long while. He was pretty sure it would clear itself up in a few days if that was the case… just in time for him to leave.

Oh, well. It was better than not seeing Jake for another two years.

He picked himself up and made himself wheel the cart around to head for the meat section. Bacon would be good in mac ‘n cheese, maybe? He’d had that before. It might go well with the spicy cheese Jake had picked out. At least he hoped that would be the case. Maybe he had it mixed up with smoked cheeses.

Well, Jake was out of sight. Couldn’t catch Dirk cheating from several aisles away. Dirk googled it.

He checked a couple recipes and settled on getting some sausages to add in. Easy to cook, definitely fancier than ground beef. He could grab some extras, too, for breakfast or for taking along on the hike that Jake would inevitably force him to go on. Ugh.

Thusly decided, he picked out a couple different kinds that looked decent and tossed them in the cart. Easy enough. He assumed Jake liked sausages, though he'd never said as much specifically. Well, if he didn't like it, he could suck it up and be polite. Swallow down any complaints he had. They were both adults, after all; Jake could choke down something not entirely easy on the tongue if he had to.

Okay, heh. Dirk bit down the edge of a snicker and nudged the cart forward. That was enough self-indulgence for now. He left the cart parked at the edge of the meats and ducked down into the adjacent bread aisle for a second to grab some sandwich bread and a sleeve of bagels. Oh, that was a thought. He went back to the meats to grab a couple varieties of sliced lunch meat.

There, now they had multiple options for shit to drag along on Jake's inevitable bid for the hills. There was mustard and mayo back at the house, and he could grab some tomatoes whenever they wound around to produce. Which at this rate was going to take a long fucking time to reach.

Whatever. It's not like they were on a time constraint. Wasn't that part of the point of this venture off into the semi-wilderness? To take the chance to be lazy and spend an inordinate amount of time on simple tasks like cooking, shopping, or showering?

Well, Dirk spent an inordinate amount of time on the last on any occasion, not just special ones. But the point stood.

He had wandered into the chips aisle and was internally debating the merits of various brands, drawing up some multiply circled venn diagrams and making some twenty-point pro and con lists when Jake caught up with him.

“Consider your dreams well and fully fulfilled to the maximum!” Jake declared triumphantly, plunking his haul of various dairy products into the cart with a little more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. “One sizable rectangular prism of sharp cheddar, one of these big tub things of parmesan, and one hefty tub of this deliciously heavy cream, ready to be purchased and carted off to become ingredients in this delicious, cheesetastic delight you’re going to brew up for us.”

“Thanks,” Dirk said, bracing the cart in place with his foot as Jake leaned his weight against it to grin at him. “Uh, cool, yeah. Cheesetastic delight, coming right up.” He coughed and gathered his thoughts while Jake’s smile spread wider. “I don’t think we have much more to get. Round off a few basics and drop by produce, then we should be good?”

Jake heaved a sigh. “Well, if you must insist on chopping this adventure so prematurely short, I suppose I agree.”

“We can probably just eat back at the house if you like…? Otherwise I guess we can eat out of the groceries while we drive or something.” Dirk licked his lips compulsively, starting to feel on edge from being directed with so much eye contact from Jake. How was he even finding his eyes so accurately behind his shades?

“Sounds all copacetic!”

“Cool.” Dirk nudged the cart forward slightly until Jake backed his weight off of it with a pout. “If you want to slouch on the cart, you can do the pushing,” he informed him.

Jake lit up. “Oh, can I please ride it down the aisle like it’s a magic levitating skateboard or somesuch?”

“No,” Dirk said, and took firm grip of the handle. “You’ll get kicked out.” He probably wouldn’t, but Jake was occasionally prone to moments of excessive rambunctiousness. Christ, ‘rambunctiousness,’ Jake must be rubbing off on him. Uh, bad phrasing, bad image, he shouldn’t think of that.

Jake unhelpfully chose this moment to throw an arm around his shoulders and scoot in weirdly close to him as they maneuvered out of the aisle.

Dirk tried not to tangibly freeze up. “So, uh,” he said.

“Yes?” Jake prompted.

“We’re, uh, way up in the woods, right, so we’re probably not going to be getting anything like what you’re used to. Vegetable-wise.” He shoved his shades farther up his nose in a nervous gesture he’d thought he’d broken a year ago. “Unless there’s some small town vegetable witch around, I guess.”

Jake patted his shoulder. “Don’t fuss, I don’t mind!” he said. “I ate Roxy’s terrible dorm food, remember? A gentleman would never turn up his nose at food that has so graciously found its way onto his plate, ‘specially not when it’s served up special by his bestest buddy-o.”

“Right,” Dirk said. “Just don’t be expecting Michelin, okay?” He parked the cart next to the bananas and grabbed a bunch. “Let’s get, uh, something for tonight, maybe something that can go in the oven? It’s not too hot out for oven roasting, I think.” Dirk thought maybe he had oven roasted something at least twice before. Not in the past two years, but still.

“So long as it’s not me on the pan getting my ass toasted up, sounds perfectly ducky to me!”

Jake really had the worst turns of phrase.

“Just grab some broccoli or something,” he muttered. They had oranges on sale. He grabbed some of those too and tried not to watch Jake’s ass as he obediently darted off to collect vegetables.

Gathering the produce they needed went smoothly, at least, with a small amount bickering back and forth between the two of them about the acceptability of cabbage and cole slaw as part of a meal. Dirk actually felt pretty good about how the shopping trip had gone overall by the time they reached the checkout line.

Jake dug out his wallet while Dirk loaded the groceries onto the conveyor belt. "Whoa, hey," Dirk objected, nearly fumbling the bananas and trying to reach for his own wallet.

"Oh, hush," Jake said. "It's the gent whose house we're borrowing who's footing the bill, not me." He waved Dirk off and sent a winning smile toward the cashier.

"Right," Dirk said. He shoved the last few items on the belt unceremoniously. "I’m going to wait out by the car then to help you load up."

He didn't give Jake much opportunity to respond beyond a hum of agreement, just stepped around the cart and beat a swift pace out into the sunlight. The day was starting to heat up, but it was still miles from the oppressive heat of Texas in the summer.

Dirk reached his car quickly, unlocked it, and leaned in just far enough to pop open the glovebox and retrieve the box of cigarettes he had stowed there. He didn't usually partake too often, but it had been a stressful few weeks, and, well, he couldn't picture Jake being too thrilled at the idea of him mucking up his cabin paradise with the lingering smell of smoke. Even if he was only going to be around for a few more days.

There was an ashtray near his parking spot on the sidewalk in front of the store, so Dirk just perched on the hood of his car as he lit up. He'd hated the smell and taste for years before he'd started, and then even after he'd picked up the habit for a little while. It had been the only way to get regular breaks, back when he'd worked retail during school, and by the time he'd quit that hellhole of a job, he'd been pretty well hooked.

The first drag was always the best. He found his shoulders unconsciously relaxing as he breathed the smoke back out and he let his eyes shut with a tired sigh. Something between his shoulders ached anew with the reminder of how tense he tended to run, and he grimaced, trying to adjust to a position that would ease the ache.

No such luck, but he stayed slumped over, elbows propped on his knees, which at least helped ease the tight feeling in his chest that Jake always seemed to find a way to bring out. Like a badger rooting out the location of grubs buried under the soil. Did badgers eat grubs? Maybe he was thinking of bears. Bears definitely did that weird snuffly-grunt thing he was thinking of as they nosed under rotting logs, off in the depths of the northern Canadian wilderness. Probably. He was pretty sure he'd seen that in a documentary sometime in the last decade.

He snorted to himself and opened his eyes behind his shades. Hey, at least that one hadn't gotten too badly away from him.

Dirk unthinkingly tapped his cigarette off onto the pavement before remembering the ashtray that was a mere twenty feet away from him. Well, now he was just living up to all the times he'd jokingly called himself a lazy asshole. Semi-jokingly. He tore his eyes away from the ashtray to the store behind it. Jake should be out any second, he figured.

On the front door to the store, a sign had been posted. _Help Wanted._ He must've seen it on the way in and just… not taken notice the first time. His stomach turned over involuntarily.

Fuck it. If the cigarette had helped at all, it sure wasn't doing so anymore. He pushed off his car and bent to stub it out on the pavement, ground it down under his toe. Then, begrudgingly, he picked it up and, gaze low to avoid looking directly at the store again, he stuck the remains of it in the ashtray.

Jake called out to him when he was almost back to his car, a merry, "Dirk!" over a clatter of shopping cart wheels. He turned and waved to Jake instead of calling back, stomach still twisted up and stealing his breathing room.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yup!" Jake seemed full of cheer, maybe at the prospect of retreating to the relative solitude of the cabin. "Just help me load up and let's roll out."

Dirk tried to take a deep breath, absorb some of Jake's pep instead of marinating in his angst stew. He could do this. It would be fine. All he had to do was go back to the cabin, prepare an awe-inspiring meal that he'd never attempted cooking before, and make it through another five days with Jake. God, he was so doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was it just me or was september like a ridiculous fucking month this year, sheesh.


End file.
